CRUX : Home

Home :: Documentation :: Download :: Development :: Community :: Wiki :: Ports :: Bugs :: Links :: About

Back to wiki start page

other FAQ sections ...

Categories: Faq

FAQ - Installation

Table of contents

1. I just installed CRUX but it won't boot (e.g. "Operating system not found")

Did you remember to run lilo? Check your lilo.conf file. Are you sure you installed LILO to the disk's MBR (e.g. boot=/dev/sda) and not to a partition (e.g. boot=/dev/sda1)? Check the boot order in your BIOS.

2. When booting from the CRUX CD-ROM I get a kernel panic saying “VFS: Unable to mount root fs”. What's wrong?

This can happen if you have more than one CD-ROM drive. Make sure you boot from then "first" CD-ROM drive, i.e. /dev/cdroms/cdrom0. If you must boot from a different drive (i.e. not the first one) you can still do that but you have to type CRUX root=/dev/cdroms/cdrom1 at the boot prompt (cdrom1 indicates that it is the second drive, cdrom2 that it is the third, and so on).

3. When booting CRUX for the first time I get the error “Unable to open initial console”. What's wrong?

You most likely forgot to enable devfs or didn't tell the kernel to mount devfs at boot. The installation instructions (Handbook Section 2.2, “Installing From CD-ROM”) tell you how to enable it.

4. When logging in to my newly installed CRUX for the first time it asks for a password, but the installation guide says “Login as root (no password required)”. What's wrong?

You most likely forgot to edit /mnt/etc/fstab before you rebooted or you entered the wrong name of your new root partition at the boot prompt.

5. How do I make a bootable USB on Windows?

The best way is to use dd for Windows to write the CRUX ISO image to the USB drive. First, download dd for Windows and unzip it. Then, plug your USB drive into your computer.

Note: If your USB drive is automatically mounted by Windows, you'll need to right click it in the File Explorer and select "Eject" before you can write to the drive with dd.

Next, open up a command prompt as administrator. Open the start menu and search for "Command Prompt". Right click the Command Prompt icon in the search results and select "Run as administrator". Use the "cd" command to navigate to the directory where you unzipped dd for Windows, e.g.:

C:\Users\cory> cd Downloads\dd-0.6beta3

Now run the following command:

C:\Users\cory\Downloads\dd-0.6beta3> dd --list

USB drives will be listed as \\?\Device\HarddiskX\Partition0 where X is an integer. These are the device names. dd will identify USB drives as "Removable media other than floppy." Find the device name for your USB drive, and run the following command (substitute X with your USB drive number, and ..\iso\crux-3.2.iso with the path to your CRUX ISO):

C:\Users\cory\Downloads\dd-0.6beta3> dd if=..\iso\crux-3.2.iso of=\\?\Device\HarddiskX\Partition0 bs=1M

If you get an error such as "Error writing file: 5 Access is denied", that means the drive is mounted. Unmount the drive as discussed above, and make sure you're attempting to write to the correct device.

Wait a while for dd to finish (you'll know it's done when you see something like "398+0 records in, 398+0 records out"). Your USB disk should now be ready to go!